Abstract

This article discusses the findings of a study tracing the incorporation of
claims about infant brain development into English family policy as part
of the longer term development of a ‘parent training’, early intervention
agenda. The main focus is on the ways in which the deployment of
neuroscientific discourse in family policy creates the basis for a new
governmental oversight of parents. We argue that advocacy of ‘early
intervention’, in particular that which deploys the authority of ‘the neuroscience’,
places parents at the centre of the policy stage but simultaneously
demotes and marginalises them. So we ask, what becomes of
the parent when politically and culturally, the child is spoken of as infinitely
and permanently neurologically vulnerable to parental influence?
In particular, the policy focus on parental emotions and their impact on
infant brain development indicates that this represents a biologisation
of ‘therapeutic’ governance.